Joseph Joachim Raff
was born on 27 May 1822 in the small town of Lachen,
on the shores of lake Zürich in Switzerland. His father, Joseph,
was a native of Empfingen,
in Württemberg, south west Germany. In 1811, Joseph Raff had fled
south to avoid compulsory conscription into Napoleon's army. After
spells as organist & music teacher in a monastery in Wettingen
and also in Lucerne, he set himself up as a schoolmaster in Lachen.
In time he married the daughter of the local cantonal president - Katharina
Schmid. The Raff family was poor but young Joachim had a basic education
from his father. The boy was later sent to the Rottenberg Gymnasium
in his fathers native Württemberg to study philosophy, philology
and mathematics before financial pressures on the family forced his
return to Switzerland. He finished his education with two years at
the Jesuit Seminary in Schwyz, where he carried off prizes in German,
Latin and mathematics. When Raff left Schwyz in 1840 it was to return
to Rapperswil, near Lachen, to begin work as a teacher. As a child,
though, Raff had already shown great natural talent as a pianist, violinist
and organist, performing at the Sunday concerts in the nearby spa of
Nuolen. Having taught himself the rudiments of music, he began to compose
too.

Raff
became friends with the young composer and Zürich kapellmeister
Franz Abt, who encouraged him to send some of his earliest piano pieces
to Mendelssohn. The Leipzig composer was sufficiently impressed to recommend
them to his publisher, Breitkopf & Härtel, and this in turn
lead to a favourable review of Raffs opp.2-6 in Schumanns
Neue Zeitschrift für Musik which predicted "a future for the
composer". Raff, encouraged by this success, gave up his teaching
job and moved to Zürich in 1844 to start a career as a composer
- much to his family's dismay. Joseph Raff wrote "he has .
made nothing of himself but a begging musician" and despite organising
concerts in Nuolen, before long his father was proved right. Raff was
declared bankrupt.....

He endured poverty in Zürich, working as a musician, but his great
opportunity came when he learned of an appearance by his idol Liszt on
19 June 1845 in Basle, some 80 kilometres away. Determined to hear Liszt
play but being unable to pay the fare to Basle, Raff walked there from
Zürich through driving rain. He arrived just as the concert was about
to begin to find that all the tickets were sold. Luckily Liszts secretary
Belloni noticed the dejected, disappointed Raff and told Liszt, who decided
not only that Raff should be admitted, but insisted that he should sit
on the stage with him amidst a widening pool of water from his wet clothes. "I
sat there like a running fountain," Raff wrote later "oblivious
to everything but my good fortune in seeing and hearing Liszt".

Raff benefited from Liszt's legendary generosity. His new
mentor took him with him on the remainder of his tour through southern
Germany and the Rhineland with Raff making the concert arrangements.
When the tour ended, Liszt found Raff a job in Cologne selling pianos
and music scores for Eck & Lefèbres shop. Although he
met Mendelssohn whilst there and also acted as music critic for the journal
Caecilia, Raff soon got embroiled in controversy and had to leave after
he wrote a contentious article in the Wiener allgemeine Musik-Zeitung.
A trip to Leipzig in 1847 to study with Mendelssohn was aborted when
the master died and Raff instead tried to establish himself in Stuttgart
- capital of his familys home area of Württemberg. Here, though,
he was met with hostility from the kapellmeister, Lindtpaintner, and
he was implicated in the disturbances of 1848 leading him to leave the
city in some secrecy. A lasting benefit of his time there, however, was
his lifelong friendship with Hans von Bülow, who was to become a
renowned conductor and pianist, the son-in-law of Liszt and cuckolded
by Wagner.

Liszt again came to the rescue and found for Raff a position
in Hamburg with the music publishers Shuberth, where he worked arranging
the music of others. All the while during this tempestuous period Raff
continued to compose assiduously and to improve his technical skill despite
a lack of formal teaching. Though his first 50 or so works were for solo
piano, he gradually began to write songs and then experimented with chamber
music. Liszt interested the Viennese publisher Mechetti in Raffs
music, but again death intervened and Mechetti died before Raff could
sign a contract.

At the end of 1849 Liszt invited Raff to Weimar. The Hungarian
pianist and composer had been appointed kapellmeister there and Raff
was employed as a musical assistant and secretary. This was a great advance
for Raff, who suddenly found himself in the very centre of Liszt's "New-German" movement
with its circle of young acolytes including Cornelius, Reubke, Nicolai
and, again, von Bülow. Despite working for Liszt, Raff's financial
affairs continued to worsen until eventually he spent several weeks in
gaol for an old Swiss debt. Some idea of the poverty
in which he lived even whilst working for Liszt can be gained from the
fact that his cell was more comfortable than the room in which he was
lodging. Liszt refused to help him on this occasion and Raff was eventually
released with the debt unpaid. He undoubtedly had to work hard for Liszt.
He complained of being "A rather superior copyist" and wrote
to a friend "My labours for Liszt, it is true, are endless. But ..I
am not afraid of a heap of paper". Von Bülow confirmed that "Raff
sacrificed half his life to Liszt". Nonetheless Raff gained a great
deal from his free association with Liszt and his circle and the ability
at long last to have his works performed on a more regular basis. When
he joined Liszt he was already demonstrating that skill in writing for
the orchestra which would later be such a hallmark of his, and this was
particularly valuable to Liszt whose handling of the orchestra was still
in its infancy. He helped Liszt with the early drafts of the orchestration
of some of the master's symphonic poems and indeed subsequently claimed
that he partially composed some of them. When these claims were published
after both protagonists death there was a furore. There seems to
be adequate evidence to refute Raff's claim to a share in authorship,
though he was undoubtedly of great assistance to Liszt in realising his
intentions for these works and in showing him how to write for the orchestra.

During
the Weimar years he continued to write much piano music, but gradually
his works became more ambitious, aided no doubt by the atmosphere in
which he worked and the chance of some performances. He was even able
to have his first opera "King Alfred" performed three times
in Weimars Hoftheater with Liszts help in 1851 - though with
no great success. Whilst in Weimar, Raff wrote his famous book "The
Wagner Question" which addressed in an independent and objective
way the issues raised by Wagner's then revolutionary approach to music
drama. As Hans von Bülow said "Raff was a great Wagner enthusiast
while thoroughly disapproving of his literary works". Slowly Raff
distanced himself from the Liszt/Wagner New German School and began to
regard his mission as combining the best of their prescription for the
future of music with a more academic regard for the forms and traditions
of the past such as counterpoint, fugue and sonata form.

In 1853 Raff met his future wife Doris
Genast (1826-1902), the actress daughter of Eduard Genast, the
director of Weimars court theatre and a friend of Liszt . She
was to have a profound and entirely beneficial effect on him.

His subservient position to Liszt irritated Raff, but he
stayed on despite the undoubted drudgery because of his gratitude for
the help which Liszt had afforded him over the years. By 1856, however,
Raff's position in Liszt's household had become untenable. It was stifling
his own musical individuality and he felt that he was too much of an
employee and not enough of a colleague. He wrote: "the pressure
which Liszt exerts both intentionally and unintentionally on my own personality is more than I can bear" and
he called Weimar "this damned village". At the same time his
relationship with Liszts censorious mistress, Princess Carolyne
Sayn-Wittgenstein had deteriorated to the point where she described him
in a letter to Liszt as "a hanger-on .an apprentice an
unfeeling man who cultivates art only as a science". Raff left Weimar
in 1856 and followed his fiancée Doris to Wiesbaden where she
had some acting engagements.

After all the drama, poverty and obscurity of the first
half of his life, Raffs final 26 years were altogether calmer and
marked by growing fame and recognition.

He set himself up in Wiesbaden as a piano teacher and Doris,
whom he married in 1859, started the process of improving Raffs
chaotic financial affairs so that, as Wagner wrote "by extraordinary
thrift and good management she .succeeded in raising her husband's
position of careless wastefulness to a flourishing and prosperous one".
His larger scale compositions were beginning to attract audiences, helped
by his friend Hans von Bülow, who championed the Konzertstück "Ode
to Spring" of 1857, and by successful performances of "King
Alfred" in Wiesbaden in 1860. Raffs tenacity of character
enabled him gradually to increase the scale and seriousness of his works.
His breakthrough into recognition as a composer of the first rank came
with the award in 1863 of first prize in a competition organised by the
Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna. Raffs 1st.
SymphonyAn das Vaterland was preferred over 32 other
entries by a panel which included such eminent composers as Hiller, Reinecke
and Volkmann. At 41, Raff was finally acknowledged as a composer of great
worth.

With public and critical recognition his at last, works
of all sizes and genres poured from his pen - "his fecundity was
astonishing" said Walter Damrosch. Raffs music soon became
highly popular at concerts and in the home alike. His symphonies were
listened to with great respect and, of these, the third and fifth symphonies
were amongst the most popular in the symphonic literature of the second
half of the century. The march movement from the fifth was a particularly
well-loved piece, often played by itself and in arrangements for brass
band or piano duet.. His Piano
Quintet was praised as the best example since Beethovens, his
piano and violin concertos were popular virtuoso show pieces and his 7th.
String Quartet was a frequently played piece - particularly the "Mill" movement.
Far and away the most played work, though, was the Cavatina -
the third of the Six Pieces op.85. Though originally written for violin
and piano it was subjected to innumerable arrangements. His piano pieces
for playing in the home were particularly successful and Raff made sure
that there was a constant fresh supply. The only works of his with which
he did not have much success were his operas - of the six, only "King
Alfred" and the comic piece Dame
Kobold were performed. Raff used his literary skills to write
the libretti for some of his operas and also for his Oratorio op.212.

Many of Raffs works were premiered in Wiesbaden,
sometimes with Raff himself conducting, but his world-wide fame spread
until he came to be regarded as one of the foremost composers of his
day - the equal of Brahms and Wagner. His skill at orchestration was
prodigious and his ability as a melodist was universally praised, but
he was not without his critics. Their main charge was grounded on the
accusation that Raff was a Vielschreiber - someone who wrote
(too) much and was too unselfcritical. He was accused of being an eclectic
whose style was a synthesis of other composers styles rather than
being his own. They
felt that Raffs natural aptitude was for character and salon pieces,
rather than the symphonies, concertos and chamber music which he continued
to produce. Raff could be a blunt and tactless person, who revelled in
argument and enjoyed confrontation. He did little to placate his critics,
however, and with growing success tended to become arrogant. "He
was too proud" wrote even his daughter Helene.

Success brought official recognition in the form of six
decorations and, in 1877, what for him was probably the crowning glory.
Raff was appointed to a ten year term as the first director of the newly
opened Hoch Conservatory in nearby Frankfurt,
having been preferred over such illustrious younger candidates as Brahms
and Rheinberger. The family moved to Frankfurt, where Raff spent the
rest of his life. He proved to be a very able and forward looking musical
administrator, quickly establishing the conservatory as one of the foremost
in the country. He engaged other eminent musicians as staff of the conservatory,
most notably the pianist Clara Schumann and the singer Julius Stockhausen.
Once he took over in Frankfurt, his vielschreiber days in Wiesbaden were
behind him. Though he never stopped composing, and some of his last works
were amongst of his most ambitious, he wrote much less than before.

He died at 60 of a heart attack on
the night of 24/25 June 1882 after several months of illness brought
on by his heavy workload. His final years had brought him all the recognition
and security he could
have desired and he had been confident that posterity would continue
to place him in the first rank. So confident, in fact, that he had neglected
to provide for his family, assuming that royalties would continue to
give them an ample income. Perhaps in writing the motto of his 6th.
Symphony: "Lived, Struggled, Suffered, Fought, Died, Glorified",
Raff was unconsciously penning what he hoped might be his own epitaph.

In fact, when he was remembered at all, the single word Vielschrieber usually
sufficed.